Character Description: Sylvia

                Sylvia is the mother of Sonny and his older sister. She appears to be, at least in the beginning of the novel, to be more self involved rather than really dealing with her kids and handling her motherly responsibilities. This is displayed in the novel in a number of different circumstances. For example when Sonny has to go to court, he speaks of how his mother pretends to be concerned in front of the judge. “My mother had to be there with me too. She had to take off from work and listen and act like she was all worked up about me too, which she wasn’t. I knew it…” (p.4) Another time where you see her tending to herself rather than her children is also right in the beginning of the novel when Sonny is sitting in his living room eating his T.V. dinner alone with his dog. She’s out doing whatever it is she is doing and Sonny is left to deal with a drunken man who storms his house looking for his mom, “…and before I even get near the door I would feel the pounding on it through the floor and I heard some man yelling at it loud and he is beating on it, so hard that it’s shaking and rattling.” (p.6) A lot of what we hear about Sylvia is her talking on the phone a lot and concerning herself greatly with her appearance and with men. In my opinion, it seems that she cares more about her own personal happiness opposed to the happiness and best interest of her son, Sonny. She consistently chooses herself over her son and this characteristic of Sylvia is shown through her meeting with Clyde and her later marriage to him. When marrying Clyde, she ends up pulling her son away from his home, moving him into an apartment with some stranger to him, ripping Sonny away from his dog Goofy who he loved so much. This is just one example of her selfish tendencies that play a dramatic role in Sonny’s life. By taking him away from his home, Sonny was forced to live with a man who could also care less about Sonny’s overall happiness just like Sonny’s mom Sylvia. Where his mother Sylvia does make a lot of decisions that appear to only be in her best interest, you know that she does love her son even if she doesn’t always take into consideration Sonny’s happiness. This is primarily shown though only when you see Sylvia start to become unhappy with her relationship with Clyde. She starts to see how Clyde is taking advantage of her son so she starts to try to help out her son almost as if she were in a way trying to make up for bringing him there in the first place. Sylvia isn’t necessarily a bad mother, she is just a mother who unfortunately has a problem with placing her children’s needs above her own. Inside she genuinely does care about them, but while she does care about them, she has her own needs that she feels take priority.